When it comes to the atmosphere of "Wind River Valley", the creator Tyler Sheridan must be mentioned.
He was nominated for the 68th Writers Guild of America Award for Film and Best Original Screenplay for his 16-year "Sicario".
The film tells the story of a CIA taking advantage of the mutual slaughter among Mexican drug dealers to uphold justice with violence.
The phrase in the movie poster "Going deeper and deeper in the darkness, the truth you get is getting darker and darker" perfectly fits the thinking and fear this movie brings to the audience: Can the silence of the public be exploited? Is there a bottom line to using violence to control violence? Should respect for life divide borders?
There are many aerial shots of Mexico in the film. The sparsely vegetated deserts and the dark and crowded slum dwellings are lifeless wherever they go, making people feel depressed and suffocated.
Every important scene in the film is accompanied by a deep and deep BGM, which makes the audience's monotonous and repetitive music more clearly feel the fear from the bottom of their hearts.
Subsequently, Sheridan was nominated for the Best Original Screenplay at the 89th Academy Awards for his 17-year "Going through fire and water".
The plot of this movie is straightforward and simple, with no turning points, no suspense, and no fancy special effects shots. It is the last struggle of a desperate person, a confrontation between law enforcement and lawbreakers.
When banks squeeze the common people through housing loans, when poverty becomes a "negative legacy" that must be inherited, and when there is no way out and become insensitive and rude due to extreme despair, should they be blamed?
The style of western movie + road movie also reveals the realistic style of documentaries. The billboards flashing back on the roadside, the dilapidated and depressing villages, and the long shots interspersed among them. Every shot of this film is desolate and wild. The desolate scenery is also the reality; the wild frontier scenery is also the characters in the film.
All the scenic spots are mixed into the yellow sand, and the real Texas spirit is analyzed in the "Western American Style Painting", which shows the audience a real America without any concealment.
By 2018, Sheridan was no longer satisfied with just writing stories, but was promoted from screenwriter to director and screenwriter. With "Hunting the Wind and Valley", he won the Best New Director Award at the 70th Directors Guild of America Award nomination, the 70th Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival "Un Certain Regard".
"Going through fire and water" and "Slayer on the Frontier" are both excellent film and television works with a sense of atmosphere and depth, and the success of the first two trials is destined that this "Hunting the Wind and River Valley" will not be ordinary.
1. The characters are portrayed with a sense of atmosphere, and the outdoor scenes create a sense of depression.
The hero found a body in the vast snow field. The investigation found that the deceased 18-year-old Indian girl had run barefoot for ten kilometers in the ice and snow at minus 20 degrees Celsius, and finally died of pulmonary hemorrhage due to breathing too much cold air.
Cory, a wildlife tracker, assisted FBI female detective Jane in solving the case. In the process, she discovered the secret of the death of an Indian girl, and also revealed the great pain that Cory experienced as a father-his daughter also died tragically in this snowy field. superior.
The endless whiteness between the sky and the earth, the withered woods, the towering mountains in the distance, the beasts that appear from time to time, the quiet and violent snowstorm... These scenes appear in the camera from time to time, extending the extreme cold of Wyoming from the lens to the audience. .
The long-range shots and aerial shots that have appeared many times outline the inaccessible, barren and empty field scenes, creating an extremely depressing and dull tone.
When Cory rides a snowmobile on the snowfield, the camera is quiet, only the roar of the motorcycle is left, which makes people feel the insignificance of human beings in front of nature.
The first half of the film is relatively dull, the plot recommendation is slightly slow, the language of the shots is cold and restrained, and the narrative is extremely strong, which once weakened the suspenseful color of the film review.
The advantage of this design is that the clues and emotions are in place, and the atmosphere is created just right, which is fully prepared for the biggest conflict in the second half of the film. The emotions of the characters and the audience are detonated at the same time. Shootout scenes (the final revenge is so cool).
2. Small cuts + big backgrounds reveal the plight of ethnic minorities
Sheridan's works go deep into desolate places far away from the city, focusing on socially marginalized groups, outlining the current state of American society and reflecting social problems through stories.
Winning by plot alone is the reason why Sheridan's commercial films are not very commercial, and it is also the charm of his works that are both storytelling and entertaining.
Whether it's "Slayer on the Frontier", "Through Fire and Water", or "Hunting the Wind and Valley", when the law fails to protect the victim, the justice of lynching emerges and becomes the most Beneficial dagger.
"Wind River Valley" is based on a true murder that took place on an Indian reservation.
As Cory and Jane's investigation deepens, the film reveals the cause of the girl's death through flashbacks: she came to her boyfriend's dormitory to enjoy the two-person world, and was bumped into by her boyfriend's drunk colleagues.
In order to protect his girlfriend, the boyfriend had a head-on conflict with his colleagues and was beaten to death by his colleagues. Afterwards, several colleagues gang-raped the girl. The girl escaped from the dormitory, ran barefooted for ten kilometers in the snow, and finally died tragically.
Indian reservations are independent self-governing areas provided by white Americans to Native American Indians.
This is hell on earth. Because of the inaction of the local government, the residents living in the reserve have been plagued by poverty, drugs and crime for a long time.
This is a criminal paradise, because the mainstream American society has almost forgotten the Native Americans, and the reservation has become a "three-no-go zone" with insufficient police force, which has actually become an isolated and extrajudicial place in a civilized society.
Behind the death of an unknown girl hides the filth and depravity of this barren land abandoned by civilized society: drug trade, violent crime, proliferation of guns, frequent rape cases, and weak legal awareness.
At the end of the film, Cory turned the tide of the battle with his excellent shooting skills, sniping multiple gangsters from a distance. He found a fish that slipped through the net, so he went alone, arrested him, and tied him to a snowy mountain.
He asked the criminal's motives, and the criminal replied: "Do you know what this cold hell is like? There is no entertainment, no women and no fun, just snow and silence."
At this point, the original intention of the film's creation is clearly presented: criminals are criminals because society has given them room to grow.
When we stare into the darkness, we will find that after the darkness, there is a darker darkness.
It's a typical Sheridan-esque story, with small cuts and big backgrounds complementing each other, showing the sadness of the times through a story with a simple plot.
Indigenous communities with declining self-cultures, self-righteous invaders, and society's indifference to marginalized people, "Wind River Valley" brings out the plight of minorities vividly.
At the end of the film, it tells the audience in words: Every year, many Indian women disappear mysteriously, but they disappear completely because of the concealment of their families and the inaction of the police.
There is no suspenseful turning point, no audio-visual feast, blood and killing are simple and straightforward. What can really strike people's hearts is the normal calm after the killing.
The truth of the story that even justice and law could not be restored was covered up by the heavy snow. The helpless victims kept running between heaven and earth for "a fairness", but they could not even trace the perpetrators.
After all, only evil can curb evil.
3. Finally, briefly talk about the character Cory.
One is that Cory, who has been tortured by the loss of her daughter for many years, told Jane about his past experience. He fought back tears and said, "When the daughter's body was found, it was mutilated by coyotes."
Jeremy Renner's impeccable performance gives Cory's character a stunning realism and three-dimensionality.
The above text is original content, the pictures are from the Internet, thank you for reading.
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